HRW’s continued vendetta against the people of Ethiopia
Human Rights Watch has been involved in a vitriolic campaign to tarnish Ethiopia’s image for a long time now, concentrating on the electoral process, churning out report after report with a view to influencing the conduct and outcome of the voting. Several times, it published highly critical reports only a few days ahead of elections, claiming that there was no possibility of their peaceful and democratic conduct, heaping scorn on the government’s democratic credentials. HRW’s focus was one of trying to de-legitimize the political process in Ethiopia through a barrage of allegations attacking the fledgling democratic institutions in the country. Obviously, the campaign, centering on allegations of undemocratic behaviour and suppression of dissent, failed to bring about the response HRW wanted. Now it has come up with another tactic involving even more outrageous allegations, and taking “advocacy” to a whole new level. This time, HRW is targeting what it believes must be the major obstacle standing in the way of its efforts to unseat this government, that is the rapid economic progress the country has been making. Its previous efforts largely failed because its allegations simply ignored the reality on the ground, gaining few converts except among the Ethiopian opposition, though it certainly affected the country’s image.
This latest report has changed targets, and demonstrates the new levels to which HRW is apparently prepared to go to try to inflict damage, making an unabashed attempt to try to literally derail Ethiopia’s development progress. Not even bothering to make any attempt to disguise its motives with humanitarian language, HRW’s latest report is an open call to try and halt economic development without even attempting to show how this might contribute in any way to addressing the activities it attributes to the government. It alleges the government of Ethiopia is using development aid as a means of suppressing dissent and calls on donors to either stop their aid or prevent the government maintaining ownership of the policies that have been responsible for the present levels of economic growth. The report targets a number of successful programmes currently being carried out in partnership with donors, claiming these have been used by the government to attack the opposition and to forcibly recruit members for the EPRDF. Among these are the Protection of Basic Services (PBS), aimed at delivery of social services including health, education, agricultural extension and road construction, and which have benefited literally tens of millions of people; the Productive Safety Net Program aimed at providing food aid or cash in return for the participation of individuals in public works, a programme that has more than eight million beneficiaries; the Public Sector Capacity Building Programme aimed at increasing the capacity of the civil service throughout the country; the General Education Quality Improvement Project aimed at improving the quality of education that is being delivered to millions of pupils throughout the country from primary to tertiary education; and the Domestic Institutions Programme aimed at growing domestic accountability through building up the capacity and service delivery of democratic institutions including Parliament, the Human Rights Commission, the Ombudsman and the regional legislatures.
These programmes have, over the years, benefited literally millions of people and contributed significantly to the impressive economic gains Ethiopia has achieved in the last few years. These programmes have proved successful, not only because the government of Ethiopia exercises a measure of ownership of its policies, but also because they are formulated and implemented with the full participation of the beneficiaries. Equally, donors are, of course, involved throughout the process. The projects are continuously monitored. The result is that they have been instrumental in ensuring a better livelihood for tens of millions of people, and the number of people needing food aid in the country has been progressively declining. The government is confident the country will achieve food security by the end of the just launched five-year Growth and Transformation Plan. This might be bad news for those who want to use food aid as leverage for political purposes, but for no one else.
HRW states that increased financing, together with the Ethiopian government’s commitment to growth and tackling poverty, has led to genuine, though it also adds, “exaggerated progress” in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals. In fact, Ethiopia, along with Tunisia and Libya, is one of the three countries in Africa which have either achieved or is on target for achieving six of the MDGs. It has reached the MDGs in major advances in the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger (MDG 1); achieving universal primary education (MDG 2); improving maternal mortality (MDG 5); and combating disease (MDG 6); and is on track in promoting gender equality (MDG 3) and reducing child mortality (MDG 4). It has yet to make sufficient progress for MDG 7, ensuring environmental sustainability; and the eighth MDG, developing a global partnership for development, is not, of course, country specific. Despite HRW’s immediate effort to discredit this by suggesting that government figures cannot be trusted, these details come from the recently published African Economic Outlook for 2010, produced by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the African Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Africa.
HRW, however, discounts this progress because there are some allegations that these programmes are being used by the government as tools to repress opposition and reward its own supporters. The report claims: “local authorities tell opposition members to renounce party membership and become EPRDF members if they wanted to access subsidized seeds and fertilizer, food relief, civil service jobs, promotion, retention, student university assignment, post-graduate employment and other government-controlled benefits.” The way the report reads, one is expected to conclude that everything in Ethiopia is controlled by the party and nothing can be accessed without being a member of the ruling party. To try to take issue with every specific allegation would be an exercise in futility, but it might be worth mentioning that the beneficiaries of these programmes are at least twenty times greater than the number of EPRDF members. For HRW even civic education in schools is indoctrination by the ruling party, and it appears to want an end to the Education Quality programmes. Because a few opposition members claim they have suffered from discrimination in the PBS or Productive Safety Net programmes, HRW wants to see the government denied of ownership of its policies. It also recommends the repeal of the Charities and Societies Law and the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. For HRW to suggest that every one of the hundreds of thousands of students matriculating every year have joined the EPRDF in order to enrol in the university is laughable. Equally, this allegation is no laughing matter because effectively what HRW is calling for is for donors to cancel these programmes simply because HRW has the idea that a few people somewhere in the country may feel uneasy about some aspects. It proudly claims it is basing this on no more than a couple of hundred interviews.
We have shown time and time again in commenting on HRW’s previous reports that truth is never HRW’s forte. It usually operates in an evidence-free zone. In what can only be considered a mockery of research methodology, HRW is prepared to recommend stopping development aid that has contributed to improving the lives of tens of millions of people on the basis of phone interviews with a few dozen individuals whose background and interests it is not prepared to identify. The use of anecdotal evidence of this kind in this way can only be seen as the height of irresponsibility.
It might also be noted that the very donors whom HRW is attempting to bully into cutting aid, and ending these programmes, do not actually agree with Human Right Watch’s assessments from New York. The representatives of 26 donors working in partnership with the government on these programmes carried out an investigation into earlier allegations. The Development Assistance Group, (DAG), concluded that “there are clear safeguards in place to ensure that aid resources are used properly to achieve intended results” and that there is no reason to believe that there indeed was any systematic impropriety on the part of the government. Typically, HRW’s response to this was to dismiss it. HRW claims the DAG report cannot be taken at face value because “some individuals” have told HRW researchers “in private” that they know the government does the things the HRW says it does. The DAG report fails to portray the true findings of its authors, or alternatively the donors are cowed by the Government’s tough reaction if they publish critical reports. It is always HRW which has a monopoly over truth, honesty and courage. Even if the donors insist everything is going well, HRW knows better, and the donors must be forced into accepting HRW’s version of reality as seen from HRW’s glossy New York headquarters with the help of phantom researchers.
It seems very apparent that HRW’s motives are political. They certainly have nothing to do with the kind of lofty rhetoric HRW propounds about Human Rights. It is rather about trying to arm-twist a government into submission. It tried to do this through campaigns aimed at influencing elections. Since those failed, it is now trying another technique. There is no reason to doubt the resolve of the donors, or of the Government, to resist these efforts. Today, the Development Assistance Group (DAG) issued a statement making it clear that the group did not agree with HRW’s report. It pointed out that it took any allegations of misuse of development aid very seriously, and that was why it had commissioned its own report, a report which “did not generate any evidence of systematic or widespread distortion.” The DAG statement said categorically “we do not concur with the conclusions of the recent HRW report regarding widespread, systematic abuse of development aid in Ethiopia.” While it is regrettable that HRW’s allegations may dent Ethiopia’s image unnecessarily, HRW’s efforts to try to bring a halt to aid programmes that are successfully assisting millions of people must surely be seen as a despicable and unwarranted attack on Africa.